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When I was in Portland, Oregon, Gregory and I stopped in at the headquarters of Steven Smith Teamaker. Smith is the guru behind two major brands of tea: Tazo and Stash. After those two businesses were acquired by major corporations, he opened…

Drinking fountains used to be everywhere – in schools, libraries, stores, and even on the street – but they seem to have disappeared with the onset of public hygiene concerns and bottled water. Not in downtown Portland, Oregon! Here, I was…

Lawrence Halprin was a West Coast landscape architect who developed a radical strategy in the 1960s: why not design urban spaces, and especially water features, for public interaction? At a time when decorative fountains were for viewing and not for playing…

Portland, Oregon is a city filled with fountains. Since the region is blessed with an abundant water supply, fountains are everywhere – in parks, in squares, on street corners, in the middle of avenues, at the entrance of buildings, under highways. You can’t walk around…

Seattle Central Library is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and is very different from any library I have visited on my travels. Although there was a lot of public input, the design is mostly the work of Dutch architect Rem…

More of a neighbourhood than a building, Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington is the home of the first Starbucks store, the flying fish of Pike Place Fish Co., and a variety of merchants, craftspeople, and eateries, all in view…

“All the world’s a stage,” but I think the best one has to be at the re-constructed Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames River in London, England. The Globe experience re-born Erected near where the original 1599 Globe…

If you were to make a list of famous tea companies, Twinings Tea would probably be on it. Its teas are sold around the world and are known for their quality and high standards. And, as official purveyor of tea to…

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It’s not often one has the opportunity to see rare documents. So it was wonderful for me to be able to peruse original copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio and the Declaration of Independence, which were on display at the Dallas…